Summary

"The Pagan Rabbi" is Cynthia Ozick's short story of a well-respected rabbi who hangs himself and the nature of his inner conflict of religion versus nature, which is revealed in a letter found after his death.

An unnamed narrator learns that his longtime acquaintance, a thirty-six-year-old rabbi named Isaac Kornfeld, has hanged himself in a public park. The narrator is a childhood friend of Isaac's, and he visits the park in the hopes that something might exhibit itself and provide some clues as to why Isaac ended his life there.

Isaac and the narrator attended rabbinical school together, and Isaac went on to become an esteemed rabbi, while the narrator dropped out of school to work at various jobs such as a fur coat salesman and most recently, the owner of a bookstore. Isaac was a voracious reader and purchased most of his books from his...